Aunt Ziumbiula

This is an aunt of my mother's, a sister of her mother Rebecca. The photo was taken in the 1920s. My mother's parents came from the town of Berkovtsa. My mother became orphan at a very early age - her mother died when she was 5 or 6. Her father remarried, but his second wife was a nasty woman who treated my mother very badly. From her father's second marriage she had five stepbrothers and stepsisters. Being a child herself - she helped to look after them and took on too much - she became a hunchback as a result of the heavy work. My mother had a stepmother, who treated her very badly and this is why she accepted her aunt Ziumbiula as her mother. My younger sister was named after her. She helped my mother during the first years of her married life. When my mother went on an excursion or had to be away from home, she used to come from Berkovitsa to look after me and the other children.